s scholarly absorption, unwittingly
neglects his wife, whose beauty has attracted the attention of the
prince; and there is a series of intrigues which threaten seriously to
involve the innocent Ilse, until the prince's evil intentions become
evident even to the unsuspecting Werner. The covers of the lost
manuscript are actually discovered at last, but the book itself has
vanished. In this second novel Freytag displays a most genial humor,
unsuspected in the author of 'Debit and Credit,' but apparent enough
in 'The Journalists.' The professorial life is admirably drawn with
all its lights and shadows; and its motives and ambitions, its
peculiar struggles and strivings, have never been more understandingly
treated. The story, however, even more than 'Debit and Credit,'
displays the author's weaknesses of construction. The plot is so
confused by digressions that the main thread is sometimes lost sight
of, and the tendency to philosophical generalization, which as a
German is to some extent the author's birthright, reaches in these
pages an appalling exemplification. What had been an extraordinary
novel pruned of these defects, is still not an ordinary novel with
them; and as a picture of German university life from the point of
view of the professor, 'The Lost Manuscript' stands unrivaled in
literature. Again the thesis in this second novel is the dignity of
labor, and the nobleman fares no better at the author's hands than in
the mercantile environment of the first.

These two novels, which outside of Germany are Freytag's best claim to
attention, were followed by the four volumes of 'Bilder aus der
Deutschen Vergangenheit' (Pictures from the German Past: 1859-62), a
series of studies of German life from different epochs of its history,
intended to illustrate the evolution of modern conditions through
their successive stages from the remote past. Freytag's early work as
a university _docent_ had particularly fitted him for this sort of
writing, and some of his best is contained in these books.

More important still, however, was his next great work, the long
series of historical novels 'Die Ahnen' (The Ancestors: 1872-80), an
ambitious plan, born of the stirring events of the Franco-Prussian War
and the resultant awakening of the new spirit of nationality, to trace
the development of the German people from the earliest time down to
the present day. To carry out this purpose he accordingly selects a
typical German famil